WASHINGTON — Here we go again. Last week, President Trump appeared to renew his threat to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) if Democrats do not pass his new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). His threats may worry pro-trade Republicans, but they are music to the ears of anti-NAFTA Democrats, who would love […]

Summer has finally arrived along the mid-coast. That brings warm days, pleasant evenings on the deck, visits from grandchildren, gatherings with friends, and the pleasures of seasonal restaurants and entertainment venues. Of course, summer also brings annoyances: Our vicious mosquitoes and deer flies, no vacancy signs, waiting lines in the best restaurants, and the perennial […]

This summer, I’m taking a tip from the Chantix turkey. You may have seen the ads for Chantix, a drug claiming to help people stop smoking gradually. The turkey character is seen trying to quit cigarettes in a calm, slow manner rather than going “cold turkey.” The mellow Galliforme calmly adjusts the A/C, reads a […]

Beto O’Rourke, the losing Texas senator candidate who bootstrapped his way into becoming a losing presidential candidate, had a message for refugees who had come to America: Your new country is a hellhole. The former congressman told a roundtable of refugees and immigrants in Nashville, Tennessee, last week: “This country was founded on white supremacy. […]

Dear Donald Trump: Years ago, I got to visit Kwethluk, an Alaskan town of fewer than 900 souls. It is an isolated place where the people, most of them Yup’ik and Eskimo, live on what the tundra provides: ptarmigan, moose, seal, salmonberries. I remember standing upon that snowbound landscape and marveling that I was further […]

WASHINGTON — We have heard a lot about the importance of the rule of law from Democrats lately. During special counsel Robert Muller’s investigation of President Trump, Democrats in Congress delivered a clear and unified message. “No one is above the law, especially the president of the United States,” declared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. […]

On July 12, al-Shabaab Islamic terrorists attacked a hotel in the Somali seaport of Kismayo. They detonated a suicide car bomb, and then gunmen shot their way into the hotel. The attack left 33 human beings dead and injured at least 50. Do events like this in anarchic Somalia matter beyond the immediate region? Let’s […]

To be American is a wonderful thing most of the time. There are moments, however, when it is downright humiliating. Can you imagine a more pitiful scene than a busload of Americans traveling 815 miles from Minneapolis to a Walmart in London, Ontario, Canada, to buy insulin at a 10th — a 10th! — of […]

You had to be there 50 years ago, and I was. As a young reporter for a local TV station in Houston, I frequently visited NASA (“the space base,” we dubbed it), met many of the astronauts and reported on their exploits. Along with people from around the world, I watched the lunar landing on […]